Heartland CEO Forced To Sell Remaining Shares

An unnamed securities firm that provided a loan to Heartland Payment Systems Inc. Chairman and CEO Robert O. Carr and his wife Jill has forced the couple to sell 4.3 million shares they owned in the Princeton, N.J.-based payment processor, Heartland reveals in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing. This sale is in addition to 692,412 shares the securities firm forced the Carrs to sell earlier this month (CardLine, 3/2). Robert Carr used the original loan to buy Heartland shares and pay taxes on those stock purchases. He borrowed the funds because the Carrs did not want to sell company shares to raise the money to pay the taxes due on the purchases, a Heartland spokesperson said then. Whether the Carrs hold other shares in Heartland is unknown. SEC documents filed between March 4 and 12 show the Carrs sold the 4.3 million shares in sets at prices ranging from $3.43 to $5.01 per share. Carr previously said he was unable to stop the sale and that he intends to buy shares again in Heartland. Heartland has been besieged since its Jan. 20 announcement that hackers successfully planted malicious software on its processing network and retrieved parts of payment data for an untold number of transactions. Heartland's share price closed at $14.18 on Jan. 20. The share price closed at $5.06 yesterday.

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